She didn’t leave her room the next day, or the day after. She did her work in her room, talked to them when they showed up, and relaxed.

She didn’t want to have an important conversation with Elijah or any of them. She was still irked by the situation with Quinn. She had given Elijah a show to get him off her back because a good joke or tease always eased the tension.

But that tension still curled inside her. She just wasn’t going to do anything about it yet. She was waiting on something.

Three days after she had given Quinn the books, she got what she wanted. A soft knock on her door. A scratch after that. A whimper.

Quinn, Shade, and Scout were outside her bedroom wanting in. She could feel the feral power coming from the other side of the door, restless but waiting.

“Come in,” she called, standing up from her desk chair. No one in the house had seen them since she’d gone out to the woods. That was something they had mentioned. Since she went out there, Quinn hadn’t come back.

“I need help,” he huffed. “There’s a few words in here that I…”

She smiled as he trailed off, frowning at himself.

“Come sit down,” she chuckled. “I’ll help you through them.”

They sat in the middle of the bed next to each other. Shade and Scout curled up behind them near the headboard.

He was having a very difficult time with scientific names. She knew he would. She helped him sound it out and taught him the Latin and Greek rules that somehow got mixed up in the naming of species.

They worked through the book about birds for nearly two hours. Quinn was actually a better reader than Vincent gave him credit for, but Sawyer wondered if Quinn also just didn’t like whatever Vincent gave him to read. For beginning readers, enjoying the subject matter was important, very important. To a bunch of guys in their twenties who didn’t really know any better, they would have just been frustrated all around, trying to get Quinn to read texts that weren’t interesting to him.

“This isn’t the reading list Vincent was told to use for me,” Quinn whispered finally, “so, why did you give them to me?”

“Because I’m not trying to get you a piece of paper that says you’re educated,” she told him mildly. “I’m showing you that reading isn’t so bad.”

“I wish Jasper gave me these.” He sighed. “He’s not allowed to give me anything more advanced to try until the reading list is done so they know I can understand it.”

“Well,” Sawyer whispered, “this will be our secret, then.”

“Not much of a secret if everyone knows it.” Quinn frowned at her. “They are interesting books. I know a lot of the information in them, but… now I see how others talk about it. I’ve… liked trying to read them.”

“Then our secret will be that you like it.” Sawyer chuckled, and she watched Quinn’s face change. Something sparked in the icy eyes, and the smile that graced his face made her heart ache.

“Thank you,” he mumbled. “For the books. I like them.”

“They are Jasper’s books,” she told him, “but I thought you might like reading more if you tried to learn how with something you like, and not just a study plan that the state is telling Vincent he has to use.”

“You’ve done this before,” he said plainly.

“I have.” She sighed. “For young kids, but… Quinn, I don’t know anything about you. What I do know is that there is nothing here that is your fault.” Sawyer tapped a book as she said it. “Nothing. It is not the fault of the child when the parent fails. You have nothing to feel embarrassed over. You can only keep trying to make yourself better in your own eyes. Fuck the world.”

“Jon used to call me an uneducated redskin, a savage,” Quinn explained. Sawyer held back a growl of anger at that statement.

“Jon is very dead now,” she said firmly. She was reminding not just him, but herself. Because she would stab a man for saying that about someone. Goddamn racist fucking pricks. Another cruel reminder that she was in the middle of bum-fuck Georgia and not her diverse, chaotic, lovely New York.

“I know.” Quinn looked away from her. “The funeral is coming up. We weren’t invited.”

Sawyer didn’t much care about the damn funeral for Jon. His team? She felt for them. They had been dragged to their deaths because of their leader, but she had no sympathy for Jon.

“I understand, you know.” Sawyer leaned so her shoulder touched his. “My heritage makes people dislike me immediately. They say all sorts of things that aren’t true, like tell me to go back where I came from. Ignore them. They’re pricks, and they aren’t worth your time.”

“Thank you,” he reiterated. Sawyer wanted to hug him, but she didn’t think he would appreciate it. She reminded herself that Quinn was as likely to bite as he was to return the hug.

“Give these books a few more days on your own. Try writing out the parts you know, take notes. It’ll help you work on both skills.” She smiled at him, and he flicked her a glance out of the corner of his eyes.

“Good idea. Vincent and Jasper would like that, so they know I’m making progress in something…”

“Fuck Vincent and Jasper for a moment and think about what you want, Quinn. What can you do with this skill? Could you write down all the amazing things your naturalism ability lets you discover? Stop worrying about the stupid fucking tests and GED. Stop worrying about having a piece of paper that claims you’re educated. You are intelligent. You don’t need a piece of paper for that.”

She was startled when he jumped off the bed, nodding.

“I can write recipes myself instead of memorizing them or having one of the other guys do it…” Quinn murmured to himself. She had started it. She had flipped the switch.

After Quinn left, she was going to go downstairs and hit the other guys with a ruler. Dumb nuts needed to think a bit outside the box, the fucking idiots. She figured Elijah would have stumbled on this, at the very least. She thought about that a moment longer. No. Elijah’s obvious over-protective nature with Quinn would have meant he never wanted to push Quinn too hard. He’d made the guys hold back on getting Quinn up to speed. He was mad at her just for giving him books, of all things.

Sawyer got off her bed and went back to her desk as Quinn paced around her room, mumbling to himself.

“Will you help me with spelling?” he asked, turning back to her. She stopped what she was about to do and looked him over. His eyes were dancing with more excitement then she had ever seen.

“I’m terrible at spelling… but I can try?” She raised her hands in a shrug. “I think Jasper and Vincent might be a better help with that.”

“Okay,” he said with a sharp nod.

She’d created a monster. This wasn’t going to be dropped for months. It was good thing, but she was suddenly thankful she had just volunteered Overbearing Ass and Too Smart For His Own Good without them knowing.

“I’m going to go get a notebook and pencils,” Quinn told her, then left quickly. She chuckled to herself as the wolves followed him out.

Yeah, she had done something good.

Now it was time to go get into it with the other guys.

She took the mask out of her box of gear and left it on her desk. She lifted the box and began walking out. She could hear a howl, from the first floor. She knew each of them by heart now. Shade was trying to get someone’s attention.

She walked quietly down the stairs, past the bedrooms, to the ground floor. She caught a glimpse of Quinn leaving with Vincent behind him.

Even better, Quinn had taken one of them out of the equation. She got to the offices and stuck her head through Vincent and Elijah’s door. She knew Vincent would be gone, but she was hoping for Elijah. He wasn’t there. She walked to Jasper and Zander’s office and did the same thing.

“You two know where Elijah is?” she asked, knowing she was only a head coming through the door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Zander jumped, looking over at her. He practically fell out of his chair, and she could barely hold back a chuckle. “Jesus fuck. Holy hell.”

“Uh…” Jasper just stared at her wide-eyed. “That’s the creepiest shit I have ever seen phasing used for… Also, insanely dangerous, holding it like that.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer huffed with an eyeroll. “I don’t do it often, but I have shit in my hands. Where’s Elijah?”

“Working on Jasper’s leg in his… work space. Whatever you want to call it.” Zander growled. “Now get the fuck out of the door. That shit is fucking freaking me out.”

She pulled her head back through and was chuckling to herself as she left the house. She knew what space they were talking about. The building with all the weapons and Elijah’s little blacksmith space. She hadn’t been over to it since before Atlanta.

It was a slow walk through the midday Georgia sun. August in Georgia was humid and hot, and there was no safety from it.

She got to the building, tried to open the door, and failed. She didn’t have a code to get in yet. She was going to demand one today. She wasn’t going to be locked away from getting her gear if she needed it.

She kicked the door a few times and sighed. There wasn’t a shield in her way, the building wasn’t enchanted to stop her. She could just phase through it.

“Why not? Who needs doors anymore?” She stepped through, taking the box with her.

Kenny Chesney was playing loudly, and she saw Elijah immediately. His massive form was almost completely nude. He wore shorts and a black apron. She noticed the sweltering heat inside the building was hotter than it was outside, but Elijah seemed perfectly comfortable.

She felt like she was melting and quickly, like a snowman in summer.

She walked closer, passing the gun safes and the wall of handheld weaponry. She dropped her box on a clear table and waited for Elijah to see her.

She watched him work, hammering on a piece of steel. He weaved his own enchanting magic into it. She couldn’t do it, she didn’t have the ability, but she could appreciate it. Very, very few Magi could enchant as they crafted. It was an old skill, one mostly ignored in modern times.

Cowboy has his own secrets, she thought to herself. Someone had to have taught him… or he taught himself for the sheer pleasure of it, which was madness in Sawyer’s mind.

He finally looked up at her, and she watched his muscles ripple from the effort of the work he was doing.

“Five minutes,” he mumbled, distracted. She didn’t respond, only watched, fanning herself.

He turned away from her, and she saw a lick of fire run up his back, but never burn him. She’d known he was a fire elemental, since… well he could manipulate fire but the fact that it didn’t damage him told her more. She narrowed her eyes on him and watched how he used his magic, felt for the fluctuations in his Source as he expended magic to create the fire, control it, and extinguish it. She watched him weave magic into the molten steel he was forming into a blade. Whatever enchantment he was doing was intricate, something she couldn’t identify.

She was impressed, and not just with his magic. His back was a solid mass of tense, rippling muscles, honed by the effort of doing this work. When he turned back to her, she saw sweat going down his pecs and abs trailing to…

She looked back at his face.

Nope. She was mad at him. She wasn’t going to drink in the sight of his gorgeous body until she was no longer mad at him.

Finally, he placed whatever he was working on into a bucket of water with a sigh.

“Why are you here, little lady?” he asked, walking over to her.

“You did all of that without gloves… or really any clothes on,” she pointed out, ignoring his question.

“I can get away with it sometimes.” He chuckled and shrugged. “Answer my question.”

“I am bringing all my crap for you to inventory,” she said, placing a hand on the box next to her.

“Oh, amazing!” Elijah grinned at the box and grabbed something off the table closest to him, then walked over. “Your ring, by the way. I didn’t mess with the enchantments at all and even had someone look it over to make sure they were still good.”

“Thank you.” She slid it back on her right ring finger and looked at her stuff. “I’m keeping the mask for myself,” she told him quickly. “End of discussion.”

“I’m not going to fight with you over it,” he mumbled, reaching into the box. She watched him pull out her kukri and admire it. “How much of this has…”

“That one, once. The twelve-inch daggers are my normal go to. The throwing daggers are for self-defense normally. The rest… just-in-case kind of stuff.”

“Alright,” Elijah replied, putting the kukri down gently on the table. He slowly unloaded the box, and she let him, knowing he was taking a mental inventory. It was also a way for her to let him see it all, get to know her things.

“I have a list as well,” she mentioned as he made his way through it all.

“I’ll make my own and we’ll compare,” he suggested, looking over one of the twelve-inch daggers. “Why do you have such strong enchantments on it? I know they are reinforced and don’t dull as quickly. With regular use, you might have to sharpen these once a year. I do the same to mine but… the reinforcement to the steel…”

“So that it can cut through nearly anything,” Sawyer informed him.

“Like concrete,” he whispered. It wasn’t the first time he’d made that comment, the other time being in the bank. This time, she added to it.

“Like bone,” she said, nearly inaudible. She watched his eyes go a little wide, and he looked over at her quickly.

“You decapitated one of your… hits.” He kept his voice low. “We had all thought you used a sword.”

“No,” she said weakly. “I used the kukri.”

She felt sick saying it, but there it was. She’d never had technique with the blade. Never needed it. She could get in, murder someone, and get out before they ever knew how to fight back. And she always made sure it was gruesome. A warning to others not to fuck with Axel, like he’d wanted. Maybe if they had stopped pissing him off because they were scared of her… Axel would have stopped needing her to kill people.

“Sawyer,” he murmured.

The space between them was a steamy mix of her cold magic and his hot. The space around her was cooling down as her temper chilled, as the sight of the weapons, and the memories they brought, scratched at her control over her emotions.

“We need to talk about something else,” she said blandly. “I get that Quinn is important to everyone here, but if I’m expected to be a teammate and get through the next five years… you need to let me try and build a relationship with him. Not just the friendship but the trust. Don’t ever fuck with me like that again, Elijah.”

“I felt awful afterward. I still feel awful about what I said.” He sighed, putting the dagger down. He turned to face her fully. “I’ve been fighting for years to make sure the others don’t mess with him too much, to make sure he’s comfortable and happy.”

“You held him back a little, too,” she accused, a slight harshness to her voice. “He’s a better reader then Vincent and Jasper know. He’s intelligent as shit. We all know that. But you held them back, so they could never push him. Which held him back. Stop. Let him fail sometimes, Elijah. Let him learn how to get past a stumble.”

“Did that work with the kids?” Elijah growled softly.

“Yeah, and it’s worked so far with him, too.” She snapped. “In only three fucking days.”

They stayed silent for a moment. Elijah swallowed, and she watched his throat work from the effort.

“I’ll step back a little and let it happen,” he mumbled.

“Trust me not to hurt him,” she murmured, “or any of you.”

“I never…” He trailed off and looked away from her. “Fuck, Jasper was right.”

She didn’t ask for clarification on that.

“Next, don’t ever make fun of my education level,” she hissed. “Not all of us got a sweet, fine life while trying to enter fucking adulthood. I didn’t drop out because I hated it. I didn’t ask for it.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Sawyer… I really fucked up that day. I really did. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling a bit guilty over how harsh she’d just been. “I’m going to go. That’s everything I needed to talk to you about.”

She slid off the table began to walk away.

“I was homeless at fifteen because my father threw me out,” Elijah whispered. She’d barely heard it. She turned back towards him with a frown. Elijah looked down at his hands. “He’d caught me with another guy, and that… that wasn’t okay with him. Both my parents are non-Magi. Having a Magi son was a blessing and curse for them on that ranch in Texas. They weren’t anti-Magi, but others in our community were. Then I… wasn’t Godly enough. I loved another guy, and my father lost his shit over it. My mother didn’t even try to stand up for me. Bisexual and Magi? It was just too much for them.”

“Why are you telling me?” Sawyer asked carefully.

“I didn’t have a fine life while trying to enter adulthood,” Elijah said with a sad smile. “I’m protective over people because I know what it is to be judged for something you can’t help. I don’t like to see other people get judged or mistreated for something they had little to no control over. I’m sorry that in the effort to protect Quinn that I mistreated you.”

Sawyer nodded.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” she whispered.

“I lived with that guy until I graduated high school. I never had bullies, being the only Magi in my school, so there’s that to be thankful for. Either way,” Elijah waved a hand around, looking sad, “I met Vincent when I joined the IMPO. Everything since then has been him and this team. I found out about who Vincent was and stayed his friend. We found Jasper and Zander, both not fitting well in the IMAS, and brought them over. We all found Quinn and decided to keep him. And now you.” She frowned at him.

“I lost my temper yesterday, like my father did the day he threw me out. Different reasons, sure, but I shouldn’t have. Your relationship with Quinn is between you and Quinn. It’s not my business…” Elijah trailed off again, and she watched a grin take over his face. “And he didn’t kill you. I was a little afraid of that, too. I don’t want you or him accidentally pushing each other to that point. If there are two Magi on this earth I never want to see in a fight, it’s you and him.”

“He would wreck me,” Sawyer snorted. “Fact. And I was very afraid he would kill me.”

“You could outsmart him since your magic is so evasive. He likes people on the ground with him, and you don’t need to be there.” Elijah chuckled. “I saw you vomit when you got out of the woods. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there at one point or another with him.”

“Oh, that’s good to know,” Sawyer huffed.

“Vincent still gets a bit green when Quinn’s temper and magic pop off when he’s upset. I think Quinn is just too strong to control it. You do it, too.” Elijah sighed.

“Mine doesn’t open holes in the earth,” Sawyer reminded him.

“No, it just gives everyone frostbite,” Elijah teased her. “It’s okay, though. I might need your level of chill to my heat. We should see what it’s like skin to skin. Is this where we get some make up sex? We’re done arguing now, it might be nice.”

“Make up sex implies we have some sort of relationship.” She chuckled, wagging a finger at him. “We don’t have one of those. And be careful, I might give your dick frostbite. It would save me from a lot of problems.”

And like that, she and Elijah were good. Laughing as she left him to do inventory over her things, she went back into the sun and soaked it up.

Now, she could move on. That incident in her life was over with, and she could deal with other things she’d been putting off.

She sat down at her computer and sighed, plugging in the USB stick to stay off the house internet. It was habit at this point. She put on her headphones, opened Skype, then made the call she’d been avoiding.

“Sawyer?” Liam’s voice came through.

“Hey, Liam.” She chuckled. “How have you been?”

“Good! I thought we weren’t expecting another call from you for another week though…” Liam sounded distracted.

“You aren’t, but I wanted to try you before I tried calling Charlie… I’ve got some important news.” She sighed.

“Let me… find somewhere private to go,” Liam said quietly. There were tons of other conversations going on around him and she almost couldn’t hear him. “I’m on campus, but I can go sit in my car.”

“Alright.”

She heard beeps and car honks, people having loud conversations. Traffic and construction. New York. The noise of the city. She missed it. She missed it so much.

“Alright, I’m in my car,” he told her. “What’s going on?”

“I have a story to tell you,” she disclosed, knowing it was time.

She explained Atlanta to him, in the least descriptive and least gruesome way she could. The meeting, the bombs, the betrayal, the fight in the hangar bay. The WMC. The deal.

At the end, there was only silence; a long, heavy silence as she remembered everything and Liam came to terms with everything she told him.

“They know,” Liam mumbled.

“They know,” she confirmed. “Liam, I won’t be coming back to New York. Not for a long time… maybe, not ever.”

“Sawyer,” Liam gasped, “don’t say that! We need you here, we need you to come back, we nee—”

“No, Liam, you don’t. But I want to be there,” she cut him off. “You all have everything I could ever give you. And… eventually the WMC is going to release my picture, my face, and attach my name to it for the public. It’s only a matter of time. It would be so dangerous for me to go back up there.”

“Is that all?” Liam asked. “Is that really all you wanted to say? That you’ll probably never come back?”

“Yes,” Sawyer whispered. It was a truth she’d been avoiding. “Unless the WMC or the IMPO calls me up there for something… I don’t think I can go back. I’m going to get a paycheck doing this… I’ll send all of it to you guys. I’ll keep the gym afloat and keep your apartment going, until I know you’re ready—”

“I don’t want your money, Sawyer!” Liam roared into the phone. “I want my friend back here! You’re my family!”

Tears came to her eyes.

“And if you think I’m okay with you being a coward and never coming home, even in five years, then I’m not sure I want you to come back. That’s not the Sawyer I know,” Liam growled. And then he hung up on her.

She dropped her head into her hands and cried for a moment. Then she started her second phone call.

“Charlie,” she greeted him the moment he answered.

“Sawyer,” Charlie grunted happily. “How you been? Calling a little early, I see.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer huffed. “Look…”

“I already know,” Charlie told her gently, and Sawyer froze. “About the thing in Atlanta and the… deal you made. I found out a few days ago.”

“How?” Sawyer asked carefully, narrowing her eyes at the black screen on her computer. She’d used Skype to call their cellphones, not make video calls. Now she wished she could see his face.

“One of the guys, Z… Zander, that’s it. He called me and let me know. He knew about our previous phone call, and he’d seemed a bit amused by it. Jasper was on the line, too.”

Sawyer cursed. “I just told Liam, and he’s furious at me. Charlie, you know…” Sawyer cursed to herself again.

“Liam is a nineteen-year-old boy who’s not nearly as mature as you probably were at that age. He’s only had me and you for years. Yes, Sawyer, I understand why you might feel like it’s not safe to come back to New York when this is all over.” Charlie groaned, and she heard him fall onto their couch. His couch. That apartment wasn’t hers anymore… she didn’t live there. “Give him time. Do you know when the WMC is going public?”

“No idea.” She sighed. “They will, though.”

“Of course,” Charlie huffed. “Though, they haven’t gone public about catching Axel yet, either. They are holding on to a lot right now. It’s not like them. Normally they let every Magi in the world know that they are always watching, and no one can escape their reach.”

“It’s amazing we as a people can keep secrets from the non-Magi as well as we do.” Sawyer chuckled. “Yeah… I give it six months, tops.”

“Same,” Charlie laughed. She heard the doorbell to their apartment over the gym go off. “Look… that’s a date…”

“Go, you weren’t expecting me to call.” Sawyer sighed. “Talk to Liam for me? He’s not a Magi, he doesn’t know—”

“I’ll handle it,” Charlie grunted in reply. “Shit, he stays here half the time, anyway. Talk to you in a week, Sawyer?”

“Definitely.” She chuckled. “Have fun, old man.”

“Planning on it,” he said with a bit of perverted, old man humor. She gagged and hung up on him as he laughed. Gross.

She leaned back in her chair and began playing around on the web while she still had it connected. She dove into the Dark Web and began looking around.

Any news about her?

It took her three clicks to find out that yes, there was definitely news about her.

Someone in the criminal underground obviously had a connection in either the WMC or the IMPO. There was a chat blowing up over the rumor that she was alive, that she was there when Axel went down, and that she may have completely switched sides. So that much wasn’t out yet.

“Sawyer!”

She nearly jumped out of her skin as Zander strolled into the room with a grin. Jasper was right behind him, with a stern, straight expression on his face.

“I fucking knew it!” He laughed. “I knew you were somehow using the internet, and I just didn’t know when or how. Figured you would have snuck one of those damn little things in here.” He leaned over her desk and pointed at the USB stick. She went to grab it, but he yanked it first. “You know Jasper and I are in charge of the electronics here, right? That includes the internet. You’d been here too long without ever using your computer, and I just knew you couldn’t handle it. I just had to catch you.”

“He’s gloating,” Jasper groaned out, crutching closer. “We set up a thing, it caught your signal. We saw your Skype usage. We’ve been waiting for you to try again.”

Sawyer sighed heavily and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, staring at the beams. She didn’t really have anything to say about that.

“You can use our internet, you know,” Jasper said as Zander continued laugh, holding her USB. “Well, now you can.”

“Your internet is also trackable. I was in the Dark Web. You don’t want those people tracking the ISP here,” she reminded him, slamming her laptop shut. “On top of that, maybe I want my personal calls to remain private.”

“Not anymore.” Zander chuckled. “Sawyer, you’re a member of the team. You’ll use our shit. We make sure that shit is okay. Too bad, baby doll.” He flashed her a dangerous grin and she ground her teeth.

“And stay off the Dark Web,” Jasper hissed. “I don’t even want to know what you were doing on it, but you can’t play that line anymore. No wandering around dark corners of the internet where your old clients hired you. It looks bad.”

“Fine,” she hissed softly. “I was just… seeing what people had to say.”

“About?” Jasper asked, frowning at her.

“Me,” she whispered, looking at her closed laptop. “They haven’t yet connected me, Sawyer and Shadow together, but they know I’m alive now. They know I was a part of the Axel capture and that I may have switched sides.”

“It was going to leak, eventually,” Jasper reminded her. “Stay off the Dark Web. Use our internet. No more sneaking around for any reason.”

She nodded, watching Zander snap the USB in half with a grin. Fucking asshole.

“Is this the only reason you two came to bother me?” she asked, looking between them.

“We… wanted to talk about us,” Jasper mumbled, suddenly bashful.

Sawyer nearly cursed. She wasn’t ready for that.

“Yeah, no,” Sawyer huffed, standing up. “Do we have a new punching bag in the gym?”

“Sawyer,” Zander groaned. He grabbed her arm and she let him pull her close to his body. They were flush against each other, chest to chest. She worked to control her heart rate so she could handle what was next. “We need to talk about us…” His voice was a bit husky, and she narrowed her eyes on his lips. He was pulling out the playboy to get what he wanted. And if she hadn’t been expecting it, she might have fallen for it. He was oh-so-good at it; disarming a woman to get what he wanted. It was almost scary.

“We said we would talk about it after Axel,” Jasper continued. “It’s after Axel. Then you got involved in the thing with Elijah. But it’s something we need to address. I mean we…”

She heaved a sighed and pushed Zander away gently. She looked at Jasper and shook her head, ending his little speech.

“I’m not ready for this,” she told him. “I’m just not, you two. He’s been away behind bars for a week. I’m still trying to find my place here and catch up. I’ve barely even touched anything I’m supposed to study to be an agent. So, I’m asking you nicely. Please do not force this right now.”

“There’s a new punching bag in the gym,” Zander murmured over her shoulder. He must have taken the hint. Jasper looked a bit hurt, but she couldn’t handle it right now. She wasn’t here to do this. She was here because she wanted to stay out of prison and make up for what she had done.

She was there to prove she could earn the gift they’d given her. She didn’t deserve it, but she would earn it.

She left them there, standing in her room. Sadly, she couldn’t leave the ball of feelings around her heart in there with them. The anger at losing her privacy on the web, the spike of lust from Zander’s attempt to sway her, the unresolved romantic feelings driven by teenage hormones that apparently just never went away, or the tiny, sharp prick of guilt that she was attracted to another man as well as them—they all were still wrapped around her heart.

Not just one other man, she reminded herself. She lived in a house designed to torture her now dead sex life. Wasn’t that some shit? If she thought surviving a few months in this house was supposed to be bad, now she was looking at five years of problems.

There were so many reasons she wasn’t ready to handle Jasper and Zander right now.

She wasn’t going to choose, for one. There was just no way for that to ever happen, and she wasn’t going to drag herself or them through it. She knew Zander and Jasper were a package deal.

Two—she wasn’t good enough for them. A prior criminal, an infamous assassin with someone like Jasper, the Golden Boy? That was never going to work. She could only try to achieve a piece of how morally right Jasper always was, and she would only drag him down in the end.

Three—she had to stay out of trouble. And romantic relationships? Those were trouble, in her experience.

Sooner or later, her control would slip, she knew it. Her batteries were going to die, and she was going to break a heart or two. Probably her own.